Child abduction-rape investigation widens

Victims' families see Adhahn plead not guilty

Terapon Dang Adhahn is led out of court Thursday, after his arraignment before Judge John Hickman in which Pierce County prosecutors filed 12 felony kidnapping and rape charges against him. On Adhahn's neck is the reflection of a glass partition. less

Terapon Dang Adhahn is led out of court Thursday, after his arraignment before Judge John Hickman in which Pierce County prosecutors filed 12 felony kidnapping and rape charges against him. On Adhahn's neck is ... more

Photo: Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Photo: Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Terapon Dang Adhahn is led out of court Thursday, after his arraignment before Judge John Hickman in which Pierce County prosecutors filed 12 felony kidnapping and rape charges against him. On Adhahn's neck is the reflection of a glass partition. less

Terapon Dang Adhahn is led out of court Thursday, after his arraignment before Judge John Hickman in which Pierce County prosecutors filed 12 felony kidnapping and rape charges against him. On Adhahn's neck is ... more

Photo: Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Child abduction-rape investigation widens

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TACOMA -- Families of young girls snatched from Pierce County streets on Thursday faced the man suspected of serial rape and murder -- Terapon Adhahn, who earlier this month led police to the body of 12-year-old Zina Linnik.

Adhahn, a 42-year-old handyman and former Army Ranger, pleaded not guilty to 12 felony counts accusing him of repeatedly raping two girls, and failing to register as a sex offender after a 1990 incest conviction.

Authorities expect the list of charges to grow in coming weeks, including in the kidnapping, rape and killing of Zina, who was abducted from her Tacoma neighborhood during a Fourth of July fireworks display.

The search for victims has spread as far as Texas, where investigators are trying to determine whether Adhahn is responsible for the 1996 slaying that inspired the national "Amber Alert" missing-child notification system.

In the Pierce County case, investigators believe Adhahn sexually assaulted one girl at least 150 times -- once at gunpoint -- during the four years she lived with him at a Spanaway home. He also faces charges in the 2000 abduction and rape of an 11-year-old Tacoma girl who was left bound and bleeding in a remote, wooded section of Fort Lewis.

After Thursday's court hearing, Loni Rasmussen, younger sister of the Fort Lewis victim, said finally seeing the man accused of brutalizing her sister seven years ago inspired fear and anger, and also relief.

"I hate what he did to my sister," Rasmussen said.

Minutes before, Rasmussen had been seated with her family -- including her sister, 19, who survived the attack -- one row back from the wall of glass separating them from Adhahn, attorneys and the judge. In front of them sat the Linnik family, showing no emotion as the arraignment unfolded in Pierce County Superior Court.

Led into the low-ceilinged courtroom by two guards, Adhahn -- gaunt and thin-limbed -- stood quietly in a jail-issue orange jumpsuit as prosecutors read the charges against him.

The Thai immigrant didn't speak during Thursday's hearing, instead letting his attorneys enter his pleas. They raised no objections to the $2,025,000 bail requested by prosecutors.

Afterward, Nancy Rasmussen said her "blood went cold" when she faced the man whom she believes raped her daughter.

"He needs to be taken into the general (jail) population and get what he was given," Rasmussen said, adding that she hopes Adhahn is put to death.

While Adhahn directed authorities last week to an east Pierce County forest where Zina's body was, prosecutors have yet to file charges against him in the girl's slaying. He remains a person of interest in the death of Adre'Anna Jackson, a Lakewood 10-year-old who disappeared from a roadside in December 2005 only to be found dead months later.

Deputy Prosecutor Ed Murphy said he expects charges in the Linnik case to be filed later this month.

"We're confident we have the right man," he said.

Meanwhile, police in Arlington, Texas, are looking into whether Adhahn is connected to the 1996 kidnapping and slaying of Amber Hagerman, a 9- year-old girl whose case led to the creation of a state Amber Alert system that was adopted nationwide. The unsolved case is so well known nationally that it still generates an average of two tips a month, said Christy Gilfour, Arlington Police spokeswoman.

"It's premature to even call this man a suspect," Gilfour said Thursday. "Any time a person is arrested in a crime similar to Amber's, especially if it's someone known to be mobile throughout the country, we look into it."

Arlington police have no information showing that Adhahn was in Texas when Amber was killed, Gilfour said.

The girl's throat had been cut. Police never disclosed whether she had been sexually assaulted or whether they had obtained DNA evidence.

Phone records show that Adhahn's brother lives in the Fort Worth area, near Arlington. At the time of Amber's death, Adhahn was required to attend weekly and biweekly sex offender therapy sessions in Washington as part of his probation for a 1990 incest conviction. That obligation didn't end until July 3, 1997, according to court records.

In January 1996, a neighbor saw Amber snatched by a man in a black pickup while riding her bike near her grandmother's house. Four days later, her body was found in a drainage ditch about four miles away.

That's similar to the 2000 Fort Lewis case in which the victim said her attacker drove a black Dodge Ram truck, according to court documents. A neighbor reported seeing a similar pickup parked in the area.

Tacoma police Detective Chris Taylor said another detective with the department phoned Arlington after it became clear that Adhahn may have raped or killed other girls. Like many officers around the country, that detective had gone through Amber Alert training in Texas.

"There are some similarities, but there are also some dissimilarities," Taylor said. "We're not naming him a suspect by any means."

Taylor said it wasn't until the days after Zina Linnik's body was found in a forest near Silver Lake in eastern Pierce County that investigators began to suspect that Adhahn could be responsible for some of the Puget Sound area's most notorious child abductions.

No DNA was recovered from the Jackson slaying that could tie her killing to the Fort Lewis rape, Taylor said.

"We didn't know who he was, and we didn't have DNA," Taylor said. "Now he's surfaced, and we're looking at his timeline. Unfortunately, it takes time."

Authorities arrested Adhahn at his Parkland home on July 8, after a partial license plate identification led them to the suspect's gray Chevy Astro van. Police searched the house and found a pair of girl's underpants, several ski masks and some children's items, court records show.

Four days later, police took a sample of Adhahn's DNA. According to court documents, Adhahn's DNA matched fluids in the Fort Lewis attack in 2000.

FBI investigators following another lead located a young woman in Wichita, Kan., who'd lived with Adhahn for four years. She told investigators that Adhahn raped her between 150 and 200 times, beginning when she was 13 years old.

Former neighbors and colleagues said the relationship between Adhahn and that girl struck them as odd.

Jana Angelos, whose backyard abutted their first Spanaway home, said she initially thought they might be a couple until she heard the girl call Adhahn "daddy."

"I don't know why -- they were just always so close, side-by-side proximity. She was following him around like a puppy dog all the time," said Angelos, who said the girl initially attended Spanaway Junior High School.

Taylor Cornyn, who worked with Adhahn at Lee Towing Co. in Tacoma, said the girl often came in with him. When she started talking to a young man who worked in the auto repair shop, Adhahn became very upset.

"He didn't like it at all," she said. "But we were just thinking that he was protecting his daughter."

Born in Bangkok, Adhahn came to the U.S. in the 1970s after his mother married an American soldier. Adhahn himself enlisted in 1983 after graduating from an American high school in Germany. He later married, had two children, and divorced.

Adhahn currently faces the following 12 counts: first-degree kidnapping; four counts of first-degree rape; three counts of second-degree rape; three counts of third-degree child rape; and failure to register as a sex offender.